Rights To Law: The Legislative Journey

Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement. They are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed or owed to people according to a legal system, social convention, or ethical theory. Rights are entitlements to perform certain actions or to be in certain states. They can be natural or legal.

Natural rights are universal, fundamental, and inalienable. They are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government. Legal rights, on the other hand, are bestowed onto a person by a given legal system and can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws. They are based on a society's customs, laws, statutes, or actions by legislatures.

Legal rights are some of law's most basic and pervasive building blocks. They are creatures of the law and their legal validity typically flows from other legal norms or from a source of law. Legal rights are often considered as more than mere lack of duties to φ. Liberties are thought of as full-liberties – that is, liberties to φ or to not φ – rather than as half-liberties – that is, liberties to φ without the liberty to not φ.

Legal rights are also often associated with deontological principles, eschewing considerations of utility and policy. They are preemptory, providing right-holders a measure of normative control over themselves or others. They are also often defeasible, i.e., they can be overridden by other considerations.

Legal rights are also often the outcome of legal justification and reasoning. They are expressions of conclusions of law and are subject to limitations given conflicting values, such as for the purpose of securing the rights of others, general welfare, and public order.

Legal rights are also often associated with a system of action-guiding and with aspects of human behaviour that can be adjudicated. They are subject to (in)validation, recognition, adjudication, legislation, enforcement, and are inclusive of and nested in a rich network of procedures.

Natural vs. Legal Rights

Natural rights are those that are bestowed upon a person by nature or God and are thus universal and inalienable. They are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government and are commonly associated with philosophy and religion. These rights are inherent to all humans and include the right to life, liberty, and property. Natural law, which first appeared in ancient Greek philosophy, is used to describe how natural rights are conferred upon people.

Legal rights, on the other hand, are bestowed upon a person by a given legal system and are thus dependent on the laws and customs of a particular society. They can be modified, repealed, or restrained by human laws and are sometimes referred to as civil rights or statutory rights. Citizenship is often considered the basis for having legal rights, and it has been defined as the "right to have rights".

The distinction between natural and legal rights has been a subject of philosophical debate throughout history, with some thinkers accepting both types of rights and others arguing for the validity of only one. For example, Jeremy Bentham believed that legal rights were the only true rights and denied the existence of natural rights, while Thomas Aquinas held that rights not grounded in natural law were not properly rights at all.

The concept of human rights, as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, combines elements of both natural and legal rights. While natural rights are considered universal, human rights are internationally agreed-upon norms that may be protected by the laws of some countries but not others.

Claim vs. Liberty Rights

Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement. They are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory. Rights are an important concept in law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.

Claim Rights vs Liberty Rights

Claim rights and liberty rights are the inverse of one another. A claim right entails responsibilities, duties, or obligations on other parties regarding a right-holder. In other words, a claim right is the imposition of an obligation on another person to respect the right of a claimant. For example, a child's claim right against abuse exists independently of anyone's actions, and the child's claim right correlates to a duty in every other person not to abuse them.

On the other hand, a liberty right or privilege is simply a freedom or permission for the right-holder to do something, and there are no obligations on other parties to do or not do anything. This can be expressed in logic as: "Person A has a privilege to do something if and only if A has no duty not to do that something." For example, if a person has a legal liberty right to free speech, it merely means that it is not legally forbidden for them to speak freely.

A person has a liberty right permitting them to do something only if there is no other person who has a claim right forbidding them from doing so. Likewise, if a person has a claim right against someone else, then that other person's liberty is limited. For example, a person has a liberty right to walk down a sidewalk and can decide freely whether or not to do so, since there is no obligation either to do so or to refrain from doing so. But pedestrians may have an obligation not to walk on certain lands, such as other people's private property, to which those other people have a claim right.

Legal rights are based on a society's customs, laws, statutes, or actions by legislatures. They can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws. Legal rights are articulated by legal codes and enforced by various legal institutions, whereas moral rights are rights that are justified or motivated by moral arguments. In some cases, these rights overlap.

Positive vs. Negative Rights

Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement. They are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed or owed to people according to a legal system, social convention, or ethical theory. Rights are an important concept in law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.

Positive and negative rights are rights that oblige either action (positive rights) or inaction (negative rights). These obligations may be of either a legal or moral character. The notion of positive and negative rights may also be applied to liberty rights.

Negative Rights

Negative rights are permissions not to do things or entitlements to be left alone. They are sometimes called liberty rights or privilege rights. Negative rights allow or require doing nothing. For example, in some countries, citizens have the negative right not to vote; people can choose not to vote in a given election without punishment.

Negative rights may include civil and political rights such as freedom of speech, life, private property, freedom from violent crime, protection against being defrauded, freedom of religion, habeas corpus, a fair trial, and the right not to be enslaved by another.

Positive Rights

Positive rights are permissions to do things or entitlements to be done unto. They are sometimes called claim rights. Positive rights allow or require action. For example, in some countries, citizens have the positive right to vote.

Positive rights, as initially proposed in 1979 by the Czech jurist Karel Vašák, may include other civil and political rights such as the right to counsel and police protection of person and property. Additionally, they may include economic, social, and cultural rights such as food, housing, public education, employment, national security, military, health care, social security, internet access, and a minimum standard of living. In the "three generations" account of human rights, negative rights are often associated with the first generation of rights, while positive rights are associated with the second and third generations.

The Distinction Between Positive and Negative Rights

The belief in a distinction between positive and negative rights is generally maintained or emphasized by libertarians, who believe that positive rights do not exist until they are created by a contract. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights lists both positive and negative rights (but does not identify them as such). The constitutions of most liberal democracies guarantee negative rights, but not all include positive rights. Positive rights are often guaranteed by other laws, and the majority of liberal democracies provide their citizens with publicly funded education, health care, social security, and unemployment benefits.

Individual vs. Group Rights

Individual rights are rights held by individuals regardless of their group membership or lack thereof. They are also known as natural rights and are held by individuals by virtue of being human. Some theists believe individual rights are bestowed by God. An individual right is a moral claim to freedom of action.

Group rights, also known as collective rights, are rights held by a group as a whole rather than individually by its members. They are often argued to exist when a group is seen as more than a mere composite or assembly of separate individuals but an entity in its own right. In other words, it is possible to see a group as a distinct being in and of itself; it is akin to an enlarged individual, a corporate body, which has a distinct will and power of action and can be thought of as having rights.

There can be tension between individual and group rights. A classic instance in which group and individual rights clash is conflicts between unions and their members. For example, individual members of a union may wish a wage higher than the union-negotiated wage, but are prevented from making further requests; in a so-called closed shop which has a union security agreement, only the union has a right to decide matters for the individual union members such as wage rates. So, do the supposed "individual rights" of the workers prevail about the proper wage? Or do the "group rights" of the union regarding the proper wage prevail?

The Austrian School of Economics holds that only individuals think, feel, and act whether or not members of any abstract group. The society should thus be analyzed starting from the individual. This methodology is called methodological individualism and is used by the economists to justify individual rights. Similarly, the author Ayn Rand argued that only individuals have rights, according to her philosophy known as Objectivism.

However, others have argued that there are situations in which a group of persons is thought to have rights, or group rights. For example, the right of a nation or a people to be self-determining. If there is such a right, it is a right possessed and exercised by a nation or a people as a group. It will not be reducible to the individually-held rights to individual self-determination of those who belong to the relevant nation or people.

The concept of rights varies with political orientation. Positive rights such as a "right to medical care" are emphasized more often by left-leaning thinkers, while right-leaning thinkers place more emphasis on negative rights such as the "right to a fair trial".

Rights Ethics

Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement. They are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed or owed to people according to a legal system, social convention, or ethical theory. Rights are an important concept in law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.

Types of Rights

There are two main types of rights: natural rights and legal rights.

Natural Rights

Natural rights are "natural" in the sense that they are not artificial or man-made. They derive from human nature or the edicts of a god. They are universal, applying to all people, and cannot be taken away. For example, humans are thought to have a natural right to life. These are sometimes called moral rights or inalienable rights.

Legal Rights

Legal rights, on the other hand, are based on a society's customs, laws, statutes, or actions by legislatures. An example of a legal right is the right to vote. Citizenship is often considered the basis for having legal rights and has been defined as the "right to have rights". Legal rights are sometimes called civil rights or statutory rights and are culturally and politically relative since they depend on a specific societal context to have meaning.

Claim vs Liberty

A claim right is a right that entails that another person has a duty to the right-holder. For example, many jurisdictions recognize broad claim rights to things like "life, liberty, and property". These rights impose an obligation upon others not to assault or restrain a person, or use their property, without the claim-holder's permission.

A liberty right or privilege, in contrast, is simply a freedom or permission for the right-holder to do something, and there are no obligations on other parties to do or not do anything. For example, if a person has a legal liberty right to free speech, that means it is not legally forbidden for them to speak freely.

Positive vs Negative Rights

In one sense, a right is a permission to do something or an entitlement to a specific service or treatment from others, and these are called positive rights. However, rights may also allow or require inaction, and these are called negative rights; they permit or require doing nothing. For example, in some countries, citizens have the positive right to vote and the negative right to not vote; people can choose not to vote in a given election without punishment. In other countries, citizens have a positive right to vote but do not have a negative right to not vote, since voting is compulsory.

Individual vs Group Rights

Individual rights are rights held by individuals regardless of their group membership or lack thereof. Group rights, on the other hand, are rights held by a group as an entity in its own right. For example, workers who are members of a labour union can be thought of as having expanded individual rights because of their membership in the union, such as the rights to specific working conditions or wages.

There can be tension between individual and group rights. A classic instance of this conflict is between unions and their members. For example, individual members of a union may wish for a higher wage than the union-negotiated wage, but are prevented from making further requests.

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